Yasmina Reza’s 2006 play, God of Carnage, has
been performed to critical and popular acclaim around the world, and is now
produced by independent company Twisted Tree Theatre at
the Tap
Gallery’s Downstairs theatre.
The story of two
families who arrange a meeting to discuss the appropriate action required after
one child attacked the other with a stick in the park, God of Carnage – appropriately – descends into a chaotic and
increasingly childish evening of name-calling, taunts, accusations, drinking
and vomit. Described
recently in The Age as being “like
a simpler incarnation of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap, [the] chief
joy of the play is the way it slides into an Edward Albee-style marital
free-for-all, as the adults begin to act worse than the children who brought
them together.” Like Albee’s Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? and Tsiolkas’ The
Slap, there is something positively delicious and bordering on
schadenfraude about watching two couples tear each other to pieces as they try
to come to an agreement.
Played out on a
simple white set with two couches, a coffee table and bookcase, with all the
requisite indicators of wealth – artwork on the walls, flowers on the coffee
table, coffee-table books of art on display, a drinks cabinet, cigars – as
directed by Steven
Hopley, Reza’s two couples start out amicably enough before they descend
into a nightmarish parody of civility. Hopley’s skill, as in his previous
productions, lies in his simplicity, in the clarity of his direction, in how he
lets the words work their magic and lets the actors embody them. It’s hard not
to see the cast’s delight in their roles, in the opportunity afforded them to
let all semblances of decorum fall away and be as nasty and as deliciously horrible
to each other as they can. Jacki Mison’s Veronica, an author and academic, is
headstrong and quick to take the bait, and there is something of Eva Green in
her physicality and performance. As Michael, her husband, Chris Miller is
slightly bumbling, but there is a wonderful tension between the two of them as
they slip and slide further down the slope of parents behaving badly. Hailey
McQueen’s Annette is full of poise and decorum, but once the food – and rum –
is brought out, then she too becomes as bad as the rest of them, and there’s
something thoroughly entertaining when she declares that she likes a drink just
as much as any one else, if only to see the look on her husband’s face. Yannick
Lawry’s Alan, Annette’s husband, spends most of the play wedded to his mobile
phone, trying to minimise the legal ramifications of an untimely new-leak, but
once his phone is forcibly taken from him, well, there’s no stopping him.
Like the four
lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
each of the four adults here is interchangeable with the others, regardless of
age or gender, and it is part of what makes the play so entertaining, so much
of a great piece of theatre, is that it could very well be us up there on
stage, but (thankfully) it isn’t. Just like Martha and George in Albee’s play,
Veronica and Michael are very much in charge of the whole thing, at least in
the beginning, but as Alan and Annette start to hold their own against their
hosts, nothing is as certain anymore. Simply staged, well-acted and
well-directed, there is not much more you could want from this play. There are many
lovely beats here, but the ending – when each person realises just how futile
and circular their arguments are – is particularly potent. As the last play for
the year – and,
perhaps, forever – at the Tap Gallery, there is something apt about the
choice of Reza’s play, a hymn to the god of carnage, of the disorder, chaos and
acting (sometimes badly) which theatre thrives on; while the resonances with
other plays do nothing to hurt Reza’s, they certainly don’t make the ‘Carnage’ any less enjoyable.
Theatre playlist: 75. End Titles, from Carnage, Alexandre
Desplat
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